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Old 08-20-2019, 12:43 PM   #305
John V
No more BMWs
 
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Join Date: Apr 2005
Carmudgeonly Ride: Ram, MS3, CX-5, RX-8
Location: Glenwood, MD
Posts: 14,753
The event this past weekend went pretty well. I had the tank down around 1/4 full and didn't have any fuel starvation problems at all. Looking at the logs after the event, the fueling was really consistent, no drops in fuel pressure and no issues running lean. Sam drove with me and we pretty much matched each other run for run in the car. He ended up getting me by 0.15 after four runs.

I'm not super happy with the handling. The balance is good and it's quick to turn in but it just feels "bouncy." It's not that stiff as far as RX-8s go, but looking at it on course, it looks soft. It looks to me like it spends a lot of time on the bump stops in the shocks, or there is something binding up and releasing. In Oscoda it was magical, so I'm hesitant to really make any changes. DC is a weird lot, extremely bumpy and this course went over the worst of them.

As far as the "official" results go, I was 2nd on index, about 0.01 behind Tommy Layton in his FS M3. Tommy is always fast, so I think that's a good sign. But our results don't count the "non-comp" runs in the PAX results, and I know Marcus Pyne was quicker on index than I was, and so was Sam running my car, and so was Sam running his SSR car the heat after mine.

It's also burning a lot of oil on throttle lift. It doesn't seem to burn any on throttle, so I'm not sure what's going on. I don't see anything on the plugs to indicate it's burning oil. I wonder if it's a PCV thing since it's done that since the very first event.



Overall, I guess I'm happy, but it's really nowhere near the top cars in the class yet. Lots of work to do next season.
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